


A Life More Ordinary

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, obligatory 1969 Ten/Martha fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-15
Updated: 2008-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stuck in 1969 and stuck with Martha, the Doctor learns that a bit of routine might not be such a bad thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Life More Ordinary

**[x]**

The flat is a small universe of possible meetings and chances. One room, one bed and the Doctor gentlemanly offers to take the couch. He explained, rather cryptically and with as many ellipses as he could –some mutterings of _amateurs_ and _I still haven’t worked for them_ and _aw, paradoxes_ and _it took me an hour to explain_ , that UNIT got them the house, seeing as neither the Doctor nor Martha have any sort of documentation to prove who they are and, in any case, any documentation Martha could provide would probably get them in trouble here.

The Doctor makes a mental note: Never leave the psychic paper in the other suit.

`I’ve always wanted to live in Notting Hill,´ Martha admits, when she discovers their house is in Ladbroke Grove.

`Well, it’s not so fashionable these days. Lots of artists, yes, but second rate ones. Lots of political dissidents, revolutionaries, fanzine editors, that sort of thing. Quite a radical neighbourhood these days.´

`We could go to parties. The Swinging Sixties. We could meet Julie Christie and Michael Caine.´

`The fact that we are trapped in this period doesn’t mean that the normal rules of time-travelling don’t apply. We can’t change history.´

`Who says anything about changing history? I’m talking about partying.´

`Better not risk it, you might end up warning John Lennon about his death. Anyway, bad idea, they might remember me.´

`Who?´

`The Beatles.´

`You know the Beatles?´

`Of course I know them. I am the walrus.´

**[x]**

The one thing that bothers her at first is the job – it’s not that she has anything against fashion boutiques, though she never imagined herself working in one, it’s just that well, Martha knows _nothing_ about clothes. The most fashionable thing she can say is that she shops in King’s Road but even so she has no idea of what is in and out, much less what’s in and out _in 1969_.

It makes her miss Tish – she is always making fun of Martha’s wardrobe.

The other thing that bugs her is this sense of predestination – she has to work in a shop because in Sally Sparrow’s account of a video they have yet to film Martha herself said that she worked in a shop. Or will say. The Doctor is used to these paradoxes –and their syntax- but Martha thinks there’s something upsetting about concepts like “fate”.

`It’s not predestination,´ the Doctor tries to argue. `Well, it is. But it’s not. It’s more like a conundrum, I can do what I want but I already know what _I did_ so there’s only one way to act in this situation. As I explain, quite brilliantly by the way, in the transcription time is not lineal at all.´

`Timey-wimey, I know all that. I think you are just exploiting me.´

`Pardon?´

`Because I said that I had to support you, here in the script, you take that as a clue to stay at home all day and not look get a job, you lazy ass.´

The Doctor doesn’t answer. She kind of has a point.

**[x]**

`What are those?´

`These are lilies.´

`I know they are lilies. I’m a pretty smart guy in case you haven’t notice. I meant… where did you get them from?´

`A house-warming present. Never had one, really. My mom didn’t buy me anything when I moved to my flat, it was her way of telling me that she was disappointed with my leaving home. She kept on warning me about the perils of _student life_ and its wicked ways, that it would be a distraction from my career.´

`Distraction, uh? If she could see you now. How about this for distraction?´

`It’s very weird to think that she out there, now, in London. She’s a girl in 1969.´

`Don’t even think about it. People always insist on meeting their parents in the past and believe me, it’s never worth the effort.´

`I wasn’t going to-´ she leaves it. She puts the flowers on the sink and looks around the room for a vase. `Anyway, housewarming from our neighbours.´

`Which ones?´

`The studio right opposite us. Gerry and Ginny, they are newlyweds.´ She shots an accusing look at the Doctor. `And so _apparently_ are we.´

The Doctor looks down at his feet: `Well, yeah, I sort of told them we were married. It’d help us avoid a lot of awkward questions. Don’t you agree?´

Martha takes a moment to taste and savour his embarrassment, enjoying every bit.

`Of course,´ she agrees, so non-chalantly that the Doctor feels cold sweat running down his back. `It’s a good cover, good thinking.´

`Yeah, well, mmm, let me help with those flowers…´

**[x]**

Martha recalls seeing one of these in her granddad’s house. It seems incredibly fragile for a cinema camera, even a portable one –but then again Martha has always felt a bit of anxiety, almost pity, about photography and its artefacts. Things that can be brought to life and destroyed by light, they make her melancholic.

The Doctor goes once more through the folder Sally gave him.

`Here I make a joke about autocue but since it hasn’t been invented yet… Well, it has been invented, but buying one of those is way out of our possibilities, with what you earn.´

`Oi.´

`What do I mean, I have it on my autocue? I wonder if we are doing something wrong.´

`I can do this,´ offers Martha teasingly, holding up the script above the camera.

`My very own personal autocue,´ the Doctor says, before shaking his head, dismissing the notion. `Thing is, I learned it by heart. I don’t want to read it from the paper, like a news anchorman, it wouldn’t look natural.´

Very much like the Doctor to worry about a natural performance right now, Martha thinks and it gives her an odd sense of warmth and comfort; this is the Doctor, no matter how extreme and impossible a situation seems, she has learned to trust everything will be alright, eventually. She has learned to trust against her better judgement, against logic – but logic doesn’t come into the equation in her life right now.

`Where did you get this from?´ she asks, pointing at the 8mm camera.

`Michael Powell.´

`What?´

`Nothing,´ he smiles. `UNIT got it for me.´

`UNIT can do everything, uh?´ she testes the waters, because actually the Doctor hasn’t explain a bit about what UNIT actually is. It sound very mysterious and efficient and _Mission: Impossible_ -like.

`They are pretty reliable, yes. Except for Mike Yates. But anyway, remember, if you ever need help, Martha, just say you are a friend of mine and UNIT will sort you out.´

`I’ll try to remember it.´

`Okay, are we set?´

Martha looks at the camera, reviewing all she has to do to make this strange, sad-looking machine work. She tells herself that if she can assist on a bypass at three a.m. after a four-in-one week, she surely can make a 60s film camera work.

`All set. Motor rolling and… action.´

`Hey, I wanted to say _action_!´

**[x]**

`What’s that?´

Martha rolls her eyes – he needs to stop asking obvious questions.

`A typewriter.´

`I can see that. What’s it for?´ 

`I told the neighbours you worked at home. That you were a writer.´

`A writer. I like that.´

`I knew you would.´

She places the typewriter on the kitchen table.

`But Martha, you know I’m not really a writer. Why-?´

`Bought it in Portobello. It’s brilliant. It was cheap because it’s missing the X.´

The Doctor looks at her from his coffee cup, slightly confused.

`It’s decorative,´ Martha explains.

He frowns but says nothing – decorating, it seems too permanent. He is worried Martha is getting caught in the fantasy of living in 1969 and forgets they are going soon. How soon he doesn’t know, but he knows it’s soon and they shouldn’t make any plans.

**[x]**

`This couch is killing me. My back…´

`I’m the one who puts food on the table, so I’m the one who _deserves_ the bed.´

`We could share. Wouldn’t be the first time.´

`In your dreams, Mister Smith.´

`It was just a suggestion.´

**[x]**

The typewriter thing, well, it starts merely by accident one day that Martha needs him to go shopping.

`Do you have a pen?´

The Doctor shakes his head from the couch – Martha has an idea and wonders if post-its are invented yet.

`I’ll type it, okay?´

`As long as you don’t want me to buy anything when an X in...´

It starts as a grocery list and end up with criss-cross conversation on paper, not unlike mismatched love letters but more in the spirit of messages in a bottle. Because they have such different schedules – rather than a schedule the Doctor has the habit of waking up at noon, staying up late like a teenager, they only see each other at dinner – they inhabit this other life, this particular existence of short, terse phrases that become more and more open, intimate.

He would type about his day, about the rude woman who kept jumping the queue at the supermarket and Martha would come home and read it and smile and say nothing; like the man who wrote that note is not the same man standing next to her, reading a two-day old paper and boiling water for the pasta –the only dish she trusts him to do properly.

And each morning before leaving for work Martha would type “ _Good Morning_ ” so that when, hours later, the Doctor makes his way to the kitchen, sleepy eyes, in search of coffee, her “good morning” is the first thing he sees. Every day. She never forgets. Except on Sundays, when she sleeps late, and there’s a faint, fuzzy hope in the back of her head, that maybe one Sunday the Doctor would be the one who types “Good Morning”.

But it hasn’t happened yet.

**[x]**

The messages on the typewriter range from the ordinary,

> _buy BLACK paint. one tin. And wallpaper. TWO rolls. Will pick you up at the shop – we’re going to Wester Drumlins._

To the humorous,

> _Did you know you snore?_
> 
> _I DO NOT! It’s not snoring. it’s a TIME LORD thing. Stop watching me sleep._

.  
One day the Doctor writes,

> _Forgot to water the flowers. They died. Sorry._

Martha felt like crying when she read it, not knowing why but knows that it said it all, about her and the Doctor, about her _and_ the Doctor.

**[x]**

Martha gets used to the mood and colours of the period soon enough – it doesn’t mean that they stop surprising and charming her; instead a kind of awed familiarity settles in. Soon it feels like she has been living here now all her life.

It’s not like in the movies, she thinks. She used to like The Beatles as a kid and she still remembers watching documentaries about them, the colourful reels of film, the enchanted backgrounds. But now she is here, living between pointy-collared shirts & long hair, Nehru jackets, tinted glasses and electric suits.

`It’s nice,´ the Doctor murmurs, seemingly uninterested, when she comes home with a flower-patterned skirt one night. It’s nice but it doesn’t suit her, she feels like playing a role in a film set, in any moment the walls will give way and she’ll see the lights and microphones.

The Doctor, of course, fits anywhere and he doesn’t have to try hard to blend. Martha imagines herself another person, loses herself a bit, takes a fleeting second chance to be things she’s never been.

**[x]**

One morning the Doctor finds a strange message from Martha typed out.

> _Ger and Ginny asked if we could look over their cat for the weekend. I left milk for him in the fridge. Be nice._

`What cat?´

Ah, that cat, he thinks as he turns to see a grey ball of fur taking his place on the couch, purring upon finding that the Doctor has warmed the seat for him.

`And what’s your name?´ he asks the animal, carefully sitting by its side. `Martha didn’t say. Let’s see. Look at me.´

The cat reacts, more or less, giving the Doctor a despondent glare.

`You look like a Polidori, don’t you. Yes, I bet your name is Polidori. Hello, you.´

The cat meows slightly and the Doctor takes it as confirmation that he’s found the right name.

Somehow when Martha comes home from work hours later she doesn’t find it such a good guess.

`What do you mean Polidori? The cat’s named Ginger.´

`Are you sure?´

`Pretty sure.´

`I was convinced it was a Polidori. It has that kind of face.´

`You are impossible.´

`Wait a minute. So our neighbours are Gerry and Ginny and their cat Ginger. Wow, I bet their Christmas cards are a riot.´

`Move over,´ she sits on the couch, with the cat between them. `What are we watching?´

`Match of the day.´

`Really? I don’t recognize half of the teams. When was the last time this guys were in the Premier?´

`That confuses you? I’m still a fan of the old version of the game.´

`And that would be?´

`You know, Aztecs, pyramids, human sacrifices…´

**[x]**

Wednesdays she comes early from work and the Doctor helps her with the shopping. At some point after carefully selecting the fruit the Doctor wonders if there’s orange squash in 1969 and Martha smiles and takes the bag from his hands and in that moment it occurs to her that maybe she just likes playing house.

She met and fell in love with the Doctor because he was extraordinary, she wouldn’t trade a second of danger and wonder and adrenaline. But this, this ordinary life like ordinary people with the Doctor, Martha discovers it’s just as exciting, if only because of the novelty.

She likes it.

She likes going to the supermarket with him even if he never knows what to buy, she likes fighting him about who gets to go to the bathroom first, she likes waking up and finding him asleep on the couch, she likes the way the house smells of him, she likes the way he smells of her, the way the neighbours look at them like they are a real couple and if only they knew, she likes when he is bored and drops by the shop and she imagines he wants to see her, she likes Sundays in Kensington Gardens walking arm in arm, she likes listening to him talk about all the places he is going to take her, “to make up for this”, she likes having dinner on plastic trays in front of the television, knees touching, she loves the way girls look at him on the street and Martha looks back, proud, “he is mine” even if it’s an illusion.

**[x]**

Martha is too young to have lived through power-cuts and electricity rationing so when the lights go out in the whole neighbourhood one Saturday evening she jumps a little, already imagining what kind of creatures have followed the Doctor to this year.

`What’s that?´

`No electricity.´

`I can see that. Or rather I can’t.´

`It’s okay,´ he sounds reassuring, uninterested almost.

`Normally when the lights go out and you are involved, it’s a signal that something bad is going to happen.´

`And _normally_ that would be true. But here, on a Saturday, in a bohemian block of flats in 1969 it’s just a power-cut.´

`No use trying to find the fuses then. A power-cut? How old-fashioned.´

`Not everything is so perfect this side of the lysergic rainbow,´ the Doctor jokes, trying to feel his way around the living room.

`Ouch, that’s my foot.´

`Sorry.´

`And that’s my arm.´

`Sorry.´

`Don’t move, before you break something. I think I saw a candle in some drawer in the kitchen.´

Martha is right, he is so used to associate darkness and danger that now, during a pretty average power-cut, he feels a strange anxiety when she goes to the kitchen and leaves him all alone. He concentrates on her small steps and for the first time he wishes she wasn’t such a quiet girl, he can’t quite follow the sound of her through the walls.

`Found the candle yet?´ he asks after her.

`Patience,´ comes a voice from next room.

The Doctor can sense himself panicking from ordinary darkness. A darkness without monsters and enemies and things that bump in the night, the Doctor can’t fight that.. He can almost hear the walls creaking, closing in on him and the thinks, _what am I doing?_ , a Time Lord and here he is, a small flat in Notting Hill, the unremarkable spring of 1969 and a girl.

`Are you alright?´

Martha is back, but it still takes him a couple of moments to adjust his eyes to the subtle, assuring light of the candle; the shadow of its flames dance and flutter on Martha’s skin like a Vermeer portrait and for a moment the Doctor forgets what he’s been so afraid of.

`I’m fine,´ he tells her, and it’s not the truth but he is feeling generous.

**[x]**

From what the Doctor has explained Martha gets that there are far worse ways of dying than having the Weeping Angels get you –but she finds it hard to put things in perspective when she sees Billy Shipton for second and last time, and she hands him the small can of film that is to, someday, become the mysterious Easter Egg that will bring the TARDIS back to the Doctor.

She understand it a bit better, all that business about how the Angels feed on potential energy, of what might have been and now will never been, because Billy feels crushed and appalled not about leaving his normal life as a police officer or his family but about a date he might have had forty years in the future.

`I want to see Sally again.´

`You’ll see her again,´ Martha tries to comfort him.

`I want to see her while I still have hair, thank you.´

`I know this is hard, Billy but if you don’t do this… none of us can go back. The Weeping Angels win. If you don’t do this, Sally might be next.´

`Damn.´

`It’s not easy being a hero, is it?´

`I barely spent three minutes with this girl but let me tell you, Sally, she is the kind of girl that… well, as soon as I saw her I thought, I want to spend Sundays in bed with her, you know, reading the paper and watching the rain, all those corny things they do in the pictures.´

Martha nods.

`She was magic. It was magic.´

Martha looks at Billy, lost in his thoughts and his lost hopes and missed chances, and she wonders if anyone will ever feel the same about her, someday. If someone would ever think that she was magic.

She takes the long way round back home, back to the Doctor.

**[x]**

`Why do you sleep with the telly on?´

`Do I? Well, I guess I must like the late night shows.´

`But that’s the point, there’s nothing on. There’s just the test card.´

`I like the sound of static. It helps me sleep.´

Then it dawns on Martha.

`You must miss the TARDIS.´

He shifts on the couch, in that uncomfortable I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-my-feelings manner of his.

`It’s the longest I’ve been without her in a long time. Yes, I miss her.´

`You are homesick.´

`Aren’t you?´

`About the TARDIS or about home-home?´

`Any. Both.´

`Yes.´

**[x]**

One day, the Doctor stops writing to her with the typewriter.

She doesn’t ask why.

She can feel him getting restless, more and more each day.

Martha knows the Doctor well enough to know that “restlessness” in him means “hurting”.

**[x]**

The Doctor said no fancy swinging sixties parties but when the party is in the neighbour’s house, across the hall, there’s no way to avoid getting invited. Martha has even borrowed a dress from the shop. The Doctor and his pinstripe suit, Martha is sure he is going to be the success of the evening.

He is not so pumped about the whole thing and suspects there’s something shallow and preposterous about enjoying a party when they are trapped in their situation. He usually loves parties – champagne and dancing, he likes that. But this one, he is set of not enjoying from the start.

In the first hint of girlish behaviour she has shown since he knows her, Martha spends forty minutes in the bathroom getting ready.

`What do you think?´ she asks the Doctor about her dress, blushing lightly.

The Doctor takes a long look at her and a longer moment to answer. A wave of dislike for the dress, for Martha and for himself washes over him.

`I think you are actually enjoying this,´ he accuses, uttering each syllable very intently.

`What?´

`It’s no big deal to you. You have an ordinary life. This is just like a vacation for you, let’s play 1969 and hold hands and write notes on that stupid typewriter, pretend we are married. But for me, for me this is torture, Martha. I’m a time traveller, and here I am stuck. Stuck.´

`Stuck with me, you mean.´

The Doctor’s gaze is cold.

`Yes, stuck with you.´

She doesn’t let what she feels get to her expression, to her eyes. Very calmly but very efficiently, she collects her purse and her coat and makes for the door.

`Well, don’t worry, I’ll get out of your way,´ she says as she leaves the flat.

**[x]**

It’s quite a glamorous party for such a small, humble flat. Martha feels a bit out of her depth, like she would anyway, in any 21st century party. She doesn’t even pretend she is having a good time so that when the Doctor comes to apologize she would be sipping champagne and laughing, arm in arm with some handsome stranger, maybe even a movie star.

Martha doesn’t know how to do that kind of things so instead she sips the champagne, yes, but alone in a corner, looking as miserable as she feels. 

She knows the Doctor will come to apologize. It doesn’t make things any better, though.

She can tell the minute he comes in the house – it’s a weird psychic thing from having spend such a long time together, or most likely, Martha concedes, it’s just that when you are pinning for someone your body is easily tuned to their movements.

She knows the moment he steps in the room. She was right, he is a success, some girls start talking about him in private, hushed tones and everyone wonders who he is, who he’s come with.

He leans on the doorframe with a hard look in his eyes, watching Martha as she pretends she hasn’t noticed him. They are on opposite sides of the room but somehow the line of vision between them is clear, untouched by couples that dance and fashion photographers with no film in their cameras.

Finally she looks up. 

The Doctor nods and walks up not to her but to the record player. Her gaze follows him unwittingly. He goes through the hosts’ music collection swiftly, with a pang of desperation in the tip of his fingers as he browses. The search seems to pay off and the Doctor finds what he is looking for. Much to the other guests’ surprise –and mild annoyance- he turns off the record that has been playing till now and puts on the one he’s found.

There’s a brief second of faintly crackling silence until the needle finds the vinyl and a couple of long second more before the song starts – in the gritting noise of the cracks of the record the Doctor looks at Martha, his eyes unreadable, while the rest of the room, the world even perhaps, seem to still and altogether disappear.

Martha recognizes the song from its first piano notes, long before Lennon or McCartney –she never learned to tell their voice apart anyway- start saying _Martha, my dear, though my days in conversation please remember me… Martha my love…_

It gives her a chill, the music or the way the Doctor looks at her, or the word “love” _and_ the way the Doctor looks at her. She has to try very hard to fight off a smile.

The Doctor still needs a minute to summon all his courage and walk up to her.

`It’s a nice song.´ Martha says, conversationally, like nothing important happened before. She shrugs: `I don’t like the silly girl part but-´

`I’m the silly one,´ he amends, breathlessly.

`Of course you are.´

`I didn’t mean-´

`I know you didn’t mean to hurt me, but it is how you felt.´

`Look. If I had to get stuck anywhere, any time, well, I could do much worse than you, Martha Jones.´

She raises an eyebrow – she does that a lot, the Doctor thinks and in a moment he feels mortified about what he’s said and he wants to hug her and kiss her and he can’t think of a better place to be than this, with her, because it’s such a Martha- _ish_ thing to do.

`That’s not much,´ she tells him.

`I’m rubbish at this.´

`Yes, you are. Come,´ she takes his hand.

`What?´

`It’s a party. Let’s dance.´

`Dance?´ he considers it for a moment. `I can do that.´

And they do. She puts her arms around his neck and the Beatles keep on with “Something”, which the Doctor thinks is quite fitting but it doesn’t really help him stop feeling like an ass. She imagines some of the girls in the party would be so jealous of her right now – the Doctor _knows_ many gentlemen among the guests are quite jealous of him right now, as well. He thinks about how he never got to tell her how beautiful she looked in her new dress. And at some point a grey cat approaches them, like wanting to be in on the fun, walking around Martha, brushing against her leg and purring.

Martha looks at the animal, seemingly happy to curl around her ankle.

`Hello, Polidori,´ she says and the Doctor realizes that he might be a bit in love with her, right in this moment.

**[x]**

It was a glamorous party, after all. Martha didn’t know but their neighbours were, in fact, well acquainted with many of the pivotal figures and bon-viveurs of the Swinging Sixties. So glamorous that even movie stars could be seen in the humble W2 flat of Ger and Ginny.

No, not Julie Christie or Michael Caine, as Martha would have liked.

There were even rumours that Bob Dylan might be attending – and it was that rumour what prompted documentalist D.A.Pennebaker to appear, portable camera in hand, in the otherwise unremarkable Friday night party.

More than forty years later, when radical filmmakers like Whitehouse and Watkins enjoy some late but deserved recognition, Pennebaker sees some of his lesser work released on DVD in the autumn of 2011. In the volume compiling his non-Dylan-related british work –titled “The red and white days”- a thirteen minute piece could be found documenting a rather average bohemian party in the spring of 1969.

If you go to minute 8:12 in your DVD player you can get a hint of a grey cat entering the living room, provisionally set as dancing floor, and making its way through the other dancing couples to one particular couple. They seem a bit out of place with the rest of guest, but they are dancing like they are alone in the room, in the world.

**[x]**

`You don’t have to sleep on the couch tonight if you don’t want. I know your back’s killing you…´

`Martha…´

`Wouldn’t be the first time.´

She leans on the doorframe like a scene from a half-remembered film.

The Doctor doesn’t know what she means, what _it_ means. Martha herself is not sure either, but she knows something has to change, if ever so slightly, the balance must be shifted somehow and the Doctor has to be the one to give in.

`Just sleeping?´ the Doctor asks, suspicious.

Martha nods, thinking he is a coward, a beautiful coward, but willing to get and run away with whatever he surrenders.

**[x]**

_Wouldn’t be the first time_ but this is different.

Martha takes his hand and puts his arm around her waist, the palm gently resting on the mattress, her fingers softly entwined with his over the sheets.

`Is this okay?´ she asks with a mix of fear and anticipation and yes, magic.

The Doctor nods against her shoulder.

`It’s nice,´ he says. `Time Lords don’t do much sleeping, but this is nice.´

**[x]**

The Doctor finally gets it, what Martha has known all the time. At some point during the night, between deep sleep and tentatively wakefulness, he feels Martha’s foot brush against his ankle and there’s this moment of pure clarity, of contentment that is neither resigned nor ordinary.

The universe is so vast. He has seen it. The universe has no sides and it can’t be mapped, but in this hugeness you take the risk of missing the tiny, seashell-sized moments scattered across. There’s more to life than travel in space and time. There’s less. He was missing the point.

_What am I so afraid of?_ he wonders at four a.m. almost indulging in the cliché of watching her sleep – but there’s not enough light for it, fortunately; the Doctor thinks he is getting old and sentimental. Or maybe it’s just Martha, she can do that to people.

With the clarity of insomnia he remember the last time they shared a bed – he had been stubborn and silly then, sleeping like brothers on a hotel bed. He wonders at the difference, at this: her back against his chest, spine against ribs like a secret code of bone, his hand over her stomach, her hair all over his face, her smell, always the precision of her smell: in a thousand years he will have forgotten her face, but her smell, he could never get over it. 

She invades his side of the bed and lets him occupy hers – a difficult, simple, perfect equation of skin and sheets. _Idiot_ , he murmurs into the curve of her neck, indulging in good old self-pity.

He could have had more moments like this.

**[x]**

The sharp, shrieking sound of a “BING!” wakes them up.

Martha sits upright on the bed before she has even time to open her eyes; and the Doctor, before he has time to process what’s happening, wonders where has all the warmth by his side gone.

`What the hell is that?´

`That’s my timey-wimey detector!´ the Doctor realizes, tumbling out of bed.

`What?´

`It the alarm, the sound that says, it says, it says-´

`Calm down, Doctor. What’s happened?´

`We are going home, Martha! Oh, bless you, Sally Sparrow.´

She smiles before he does, rushing, in case he notices the hint of disappointment in her eyes.

**[x]**

In the rush and excitement and joy of having transport again and getting back the TARDIS Martha doesn’t notice, and the Doctor is careful not to bring it to her attention, how there’s a new note on the typewriters, one last thing the Doctor wrote overnight.

They get in the TARDIS, she never gets to read it, those two lines.

> _  
> I know I’m rubbish at this. I didn’t mean I could do much worse than you; I mean I’m glad it’s you._
> 
> _Good morning, Martha._


End file.
